EDIT: Sorry the original quote is "Mother, the screws are coming undone."

I apologize for mucking that up.

I don't own what it came from and the contest rules still apply (see below for more details) so I can't tell you WHAT I don't own, but I don't own it.

Hi all. Uhm. I should continue other stories I have going in this section. But I don't like those anymore and this is sort of odd. Uhm. The narrator is in fact insane, so everything you see in italics is the voices in her head talking to her. If its confusing do tell me about it in reviews but nine times out of ten my answer will be that its just that she's insane and it will make more sense later. But go ahead and ask and maybe you'll catch a mistake of mine.

I don't own Sherlock Holmes or any of the related characters. I don't own Master and Margarita hell I can barely get through it. But I would like to point out its written by Mikhail Bulgakov and if you like Russian History and biblical stuff you'll adore it.

I often get too emotional about patients in my care. Its why I never became a doctor, I just get too wrapped up in their lives. The girl in 412. I've come to love her as much as I would love a daughter. She came to us half dead and now, a year and a half later she's all better. Well, aside from the coma she's in. No one comes to see her anymore, all the flowers have died, and all the balloons have deflated. So I bring her flowers, and I talk to her. While I bathe her and brush her hair I talk to her. About anything really I just want her to hear a voice. I don't know what she's like but I know she likes mysteries so sometimes I find riddles for her—I know she can hear me, she's got the brain activity to show it—but most of the time all I have for her is gossip. Gossip or the latest news on movies, music and politics; I don't know what else to talk to her about. When I get really desperate I narrate what I am doing, 'I'm brushing your hair. It doesn't look right this short but we can't change it. I'm sorry. I'm brushing your hair, its very pretty. There's so much of it.' Desperate attempts to help her. Give her something to follow home. So far it hasn't worked, but she hasn't gotten worse either so its obviously not hurting her any.

A boy her age used to come every day and read to her. He'd read her Sherlock Holmes stories, and then he ran out. Still he came and he would read books written by others about the detective he told me she hated. I asked why he read the stories to her if she hated the man but he just shrugged and looked down at her in the bed. "Her hair is getting dull. I'll bring her special shampoo for you to use." He told me. None of the people who ever came seemed to agree on what she liked. A girl told him to read the sleeping girl The Master and Margarita but it proved too much for him. They could not decipher the language and so returned to speaking or reading Sherlock Holmes. For six months he came. And then even he stopped coming. It was not like the others; first he would only come every few days only for an hour or so, then once a week, then once a month for just an hour. I think he may come still on Christmas—I've been told she loves Christmas—but I don't know for sure. I don't know much about her so I make things up. I decided that her favorite flowers were mums. She looks so innocent it has to be something potted because anything that was slowly withering away would surely depress her. When I can't be there I put on the radio. She had an iPod on her when they brought her in and—wrong though it was—I sifted through the music before her family picked it up. So I always make sure the radio I have in there plays CDs and I put in David Bowie music. She had more CDs of his than I could name. She had one stuffed animal that someone gave, something tied to a box of chocolates, so impersonal. I went out and I bought her a stuffed lion that flopped about and had the softest fur I'd ever felt. His mane is wild about him and falls into his gleaming button eyes. He will protect her and guide her home.

Sometimes I buy her little amounts of body wash for when I clean her. She needs to smell of cooking, of maple and cinnamon and pumpkin. She looks like she should smell of warm, exotic things. I love the maple best on her. It just seems to complete her so well. Its hard to do on my salary but I have a daddy who loves me and spoils me in my attempt to work like a real person. Since no one comes for her anymore but she is being kept alive I feel its my duty as the sole nurse for her to do something. She's going to have a hard time when she wakes up. She's got more than a few scars and her hair—which was long and flowing when she came to us—has been cut around her ears. I don't know what I'll tell her when she wakes up, about her friends and her family. Her hair, once long and red is still the same beautiful color of autumn—matching and contrasting all at once with those spring green eyes. Christmas colors. No wondered she loved the holiday. That I won't have to explain, she'll accept it I know it will. Explaining why her family, why her friends won't come. That will be harder. Maybe she's used to it and won't ask. I don't know which would be better, if it would be better to have her used to it and not disappointed or for her to have had a wonderful life filled with laughter and love only to be disappointed.

On Christmas I stayed late—I'm Jewish anyway—and sat by her, talking through my tears. No one had come for her. I told her that I was sure they were busy working hard for money to keep her alive. I told her when she woke up they would have a place for her still, that they hadn't counted her out just yet. It was more my mantra in a way than something to help her, 'When you wake up it will all be better.' I must have said it a thousand times that night. It was cold and raining outside but in her little room it was warm and bright and we talked and I gave her eggnog. Those in coma's sometimes remember things. They can brush their own teeth or their own hair. This girl could eat on her own and on a good day she would help a little when we stretched her muscles—fighting off atrophy—working with us. Of course she was used to exercise she looked so fit. I had eggnog for her that night and a little bit of cake I'd stolen from the Nurses' down in the pediatric wing. I knew one Christmas Carol from when I had dated a Christian boy and gone to his house for Christmas Dinner. I still remembered it though I didn't know why.

Silent Night

Holy Night

All is calm,

All is bright...

Over the time I had spent in this odd state of not awake and yet not asleep I had come to know I was going mad. Slowly but surely either why I was going mad. At first Alan had come to visit every day. He would talk to me and read to me and it gave me something to focus on, gave me something to anchor myself to the real world, the world I knew I should be a part of. I knew he came every day and it let me know how much time was passing. Then he started coming less and less and the less he came the more I lost myself. I dropped into a world behind what I could see with my eyes—though I couldn't interact with that world—and into something dark and plain. I wished I was back in his study and I began to picture it. Just to see if I could. As I began remembering it became...well it became So. The walls formed around me with their wallpaper. Deep red with little flowering things on them that I had no name for, I knew that they had been a flower I couldn't name before but now it was a combination of a daisy and a rose. I knew that wasn't right but because I saw it in my mind it was so. There was a prevalent smell of chemicals, I couldn't name that burned my nose slightly. I saw the couch that I used to lounge on and instead of having those arms that used to kink my neck it had huge, overstuffed arms and it didn't have any of the stains it had carried in the life I knew. I saw books on the shelves and I looked over the covers and saw books I knew. I knew he'd never even heard of The Princess Bride but there was the book there on the shelf and I took it down. I looked to the door that currently opened onto darkness. I dedicated what I had of this room to my memory as best I could and was drawn our by his return. When I dropped back into this world after a few days of no signs of Alan I found the room as I had left it, though the wallpaper was peeling a little. I looked through the door and envisioned a hall—I wanted a bath—to a bathroom I had always wanted and never gotten.

Wait...

Why did I need a bathroom? I was all in my head. I shook my 'head' and laughed at myself in a nervous sort of way. I was drifting I could feel it. I was drifting away from reality, away from the world I knew. I took a book off of the shelf and wondered how I remembered all the words within these books.

Maybe you don't.

I shivered despite the warm fire—

There is no fire this is all in your head

--and prayed that things wouldn't get any weirder than they were currently getting. I still needed that shower though—

Mother, the screws are coming loose

--so I walked to the door of the room and pushed my hands against the worn wood. For a moment I stood and breathed in the chemical scent that always hung about this room—the scent that I had, after a time, grown to love—and I thought. I envisioned a long hall, stretching into the beyond with pale marble and green walls and more doors, doors just like this one. I pushed open the door and found my hallway, or had it always been there? And I walked to the first door on my left, pushing it open with a simple motion. There was nothing.

Oh right...I'm in my head.

I faded back into reality, it was like I was submerged in water and I was trying to swim to the surface but it felt as though my legs were weighted and over the next few months it got harder and harder for me to make this trip so I made it less and less often. The nurse tried to speak to me but her voice was hard to concentrate on and I always ended up slipping back into this strange world where inner voices spoke to me like different people.

The next morning when I work to the sun shinning through my windows I stretched and yawned, climbing out of my four-poster bed and stretching again, just to be sure I got all the kinks out, and then I walked to the bathroom, taking a long bath in water that was the perfect temperature. All the candles that were scattered about this room flared up at once and Autumn from Vivaldi's Four Seasons began playing. The whole room smelled of flowers and spices and the bubbles in the bathtub were huge and some chose to float lazily around the room, occasionally landing on something and shimmering for a moment like an opal before they lifted back into the air.

I read a book as I lounged, How to tell when you're insane, and there was a quiz first off. "Do you hear voices?"

You're not reading anything

'Yup.' I thought to myself. "Do they repeat any specific phrase?"

Mother, the screws are coming loose.

'Uh-huh. Check.' There was a space for an essay, "How did you come to own such a lovely bathroom?"

You don't, you're in your head.

'I made it.'

No you didn't. Don't you remember? Him, him and his science, his smooth voice and those stormy eyes. I know you remember his eyes.

'That's right...' I did remember his eyes. For a moment I stood in the center of an ocean during a storm, looking down at the water that would match the sky but for the slight twists of green that snaked through it. I stared at the paper for a moment and the line 'I made it' vanished as I began to tell my story.

Mother the screws...Don't forget the screws...

Yes, telling my story would put the screws back into their proper places, do stop interrupting. Its very rude you know.

My apologies.

No harm done. Now...how I came here...how did I come here...will you start me off please?

You were in Australia. Start from when you were leaving the plane.

That's right...I was flying to Australia with my orchestra and my harp.

That's right.

The memories, as they started flooding towards me turned the water cold and the mirror cracked. My chest burned with the pain of my shattered harp.

Your heart. It was your heart that was broken.

My...my heart?

Yes, keep telling the story. Remember.

My harp was in the bowels of the plane, I wasn't attached to it like some people got attached to their instruments, though I did love it. I was surprised they were letting me come, that they had let me into the orchestra at all because...well I'm odd looking. Though I hadn't lost use of my eye so I did still have my depth perception, but I should be pretty, like everyone else. I'd been an idiot and fought back when someone tried to mug me and he—the guy mugging me—had swung at me with a knife, straight down from the top of my head to my shoulder. I'd protected my eye by throwing up a hand but I had a scar trailing about an inch on my forehead and then curving a bit like a backwards "J" on my cheek below my eye. If I put my arm up you saw it continue in a line along my arm. Matching up like a puzzle. They didn't mind but I was certainly embarrassed by it. Still though, they had wanted me to come along on this trip so I had. I couldn't let them down...

So I had come, even though I didn't really fit in, at least I didn't think so. I felt like a pigeon in a group of peacocks, a cow in a field of Unicorns...anything but I didn't belong. They said I did belong, but that was because they loved music and they saw beyond the scar and the temper that I did have and they just heard the music. Of course I was good at music it was the only thing I'd ever love that hadn't hurt me in the end, and never would hurt me. I knew it wouldn't, it may leave me but I would not mourn its loss because even if I could no longer make music I could always listen to it. It would always be there on the sidelines even if it no longer stood beside me. We gathered in front of the airport and most of us loaded onto the bus while some who wanted to travel with their instruments tended to take cabs. The rest of us piled onto the bus and headed in this fashion to the hotel that was putting us up. I sat next to one of the flautists and we talked of shopping in this area. We both seemed to agree on the fact that music was such an integral part of our souls that we did not need to speak of it all the time, for it was always there, somewhere, within us.

I always hated going out since people stared. They stared or they didn't stare. And I mean they were so obviously not staring it was just as bad as if they stared. Some people ignored it well enough but I still wondered in my head if they were thinking, "I don't want to stare, the poor dear has probably been through enough." Because that was pity and I didn't want pity. I just wanted to be a normal person. She talked about how she wanted to take me snorkeling and joked that we'd look like fish with the big goggles on. "The fish will think we're tourist fish from some distant sea." She announced, always being slightly airy and flighty like that, lost constantly in her dreams which was a good thing for a flautist because their music was always sort of dreaming and light. Over my years traveling with them I realized you could tell a lot about a person by the instrument they played. The drummer was loud and to the point, sometimes with a bit of grace but not likely.

It was little things like that but I liked seeing how much people were like their instruments, like people that looked and acted like their pets.

Terrible Analogy.

Shut up.

We pulled up to the hotel and I got off the bus. They would deliver my harp to my room seeing as I didn't think that any one person could lift the thing. I loved it, no I really did, but I didn't enjoy how heavy it was. I walked to my room—well not the whole way since there were elevators—and plopped onto the bed, flicking on the television I watched cartoons into the night and I watched a few movies that I had to buy from the hotel for an obscene price. It was worth it to calm myself and let myself float in the nothingness that came when someone else was doing the work to keep you entertained. The next morning I would wake early and go for a run. So when the sun rose and spilled through my windows, forcing me out of my warm, deep sleep, I stood and stretched while I plotted—I don't plan, that's too kind, I plot—what to wear.

Your sweater and shorts.

And sandals. I loved those sandals no matter that I wasn't meant to run in them. My sweater was so large you could barely tell I had shorts on beneath it. Occasionally it lifted enough that you could see the frayed denim but for the most part it looked as though I wore a gray hoodie that was advertising the Zodiac Killer for no reason other than I was an odd, odd child. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail—much too lazy and unskilled to do anything more to it and I headed down and out into the open air. It was hot and disgusting out, I liked the weather where I was from, not this hot, dry weather that made my lips chap. I ran anyway, because running made me feel better. I didn't think, I just ran and nothing bothered me. I didn't think too much, I didn't try to understand things, I didn't do anything that drew my mind onto topics that I wished to ignore. While I ran I listened to my iPod. A beautiful invention if I had ever seen one. I listened to music I had no way of playing, I listened to Jazz, to Funk, to Rock and to Pop. I listened to the music I did not have the skill to play on my harp for I had my friends and companions to listen to if I wanted classical. I suppose that was an odd way of looking at things but...again...I am an odd human being.

The screws.

My mother used to say that they didn't screw my brain in properly and I was weird because of that. I knew she didn't mean it to hurt and it didn't, in fact, hurt me. I did believe it however.

You are digressing.

Right. Sorry. I ran because I wanted some moments free from the nagging thoughts that constantly plagued me and I would stop and take a cab back when my legs refused to move any longer. I was actually stopped before that happened when my iPod skipped and then with a sickening click it shut off. I stopped and looked down at it, my fingers working furiously to get it playing once more. I think—though it happened so long ago my memories are slightly vague at this particular junction—that I first noticed that despite how unbearably hot it had been earlier I was now very cold and it was raining lightly. Then, for absolutely no reason at all, my eyes shifted from the dark screen of my iPod and I noticed I was standing on a cobblestone street. Very slowly I tilted my head up and through my bangs I began to examine what was supposed to be the boardwalk near my hotel. I was standing on a cobblestone street on what I was sure was Regents park. Only the last time I had been here there had been the occasionally wrapper from a Big Mac and Miller bottle cap. I very slowly twisted and saw people milling about, shooting glances at me and my strange clothing. Well, strange compared to what they were wearing. Dresses that I had only seen at costume shops, horses---well those weren't so weird—and gas lamps. Things from a world that I had only seen in movies.

I am not a strong person in times of crisis. I can be, after I have had time to have a fit of sorts. So when I felt compelled to act as follows please understand this does not dictate how I planned to react for the rest of this adventure.

Who are you talking to?

I dropped into a sitting position and started crying, trying to stifle myself from sobbing and managing that but failing at not crying. I pulled my legs up underneath the sweater and I continued crying, much to the confusion of those around me. I didn't care because at that moment all I wanted, was to keep crying forever.

cookies and a cameo character appearance if they want it for anyone who can tell me where "Mother the screws are coming loose" and all variations thereof is from.